Many would have struggled to understand Garret's point, but Khan's broader perspective allowed him to realize what most scientists could miss.
The attunent level didn't differentiate between humans and aliens. It simply represented how much flesh the mana had enhanced. Khan had found the scanners reliable even after the transformation, but the training session inside the pool had probably brought a more revolutionary change.
Transforming Khan was the whole point of the new training thod. The pool had to attempt to evolve him before reaching full attunent. That ant developing higher-level tissues, which required and could accommodate more mana.
In short, Khan's flesh now needed more energy to get an additional point on the attunent scale, and that had a retroactive effect. The amount of mana inside his body didn't change. He didn't even lose his progress. The pool had increased his requirents, which the scanners reflected in that regression.
Of course, that was still only a hypothesis, but Khan had learned to trust Garret's instincts. The Bizelli family had labeled him a prodigy, and Khan was starting to understand why. Moreover, the idea made sense and aligned with what Khan was attempting to do, so he felt he could consider it true for now.
"We'll know for sure in a few training sessions," Khan eventually announced, grunting as he forced himself out of bed. His strength had continued to return, and the trend's pace had gradually increased. He was recovering faster than ever, aning resting wasn't allowed anymore.
"My Prince!" Abraham called, attempting to scold Khan back to bed, but the latter acted before he could add anything.
The cold sensation that invaded Khan when his bare feet touched the tal floor cooled his thoughts, removing the last bits of the piercing headache. His hands also went on his chest, ripping off the bandages to expose the skin underneath.
The scene was far from good. Khan spotted wounds, burns, and holes. His skin had caved in in so places due to the absence of flesh underneath, but a silver lining existed.
As damaged as Khan's body looked, he also noticed how quickly he was recovering. He could almost see his regrowing skin with his naked eyes, sothing he had never witnessed before. His condition was improving at an unfathomable pace without requiring a ditative session.
"Did you drug or sothing?" Khan wondered. "I've never healed this fast."
The question was superfluous. As Khan's senses regained their full range and power, he noticed the absence of foreign substances inside him. As strange as it sounded, the unnatural recovery was completely natural.
"We noticed that phenonon, Prince Khan," Garret revealed, eyeing one of the nearby consoles. Khan still had scanners pointed at him, and those machines continuously updated the scientists with new data.
"Your initial condition should have required months to heal, My Prince," Abraham explained. "Maybe weeks for you. Still, you dealt with it in hours."
"The recovery has also picked up the pace," Garret added. "It grew quicker by the minute, and that has yet to stop."
Khan proceeded to remove the remaining bandages, ending up butt-naked in the middle of that dical bay. His appearance was still terrible, but he could see his recovery getting faster. Khan even spotted a caved-in spot rising as flesh filled the space below.
"Why is this happening?" Khan asked. "And skip the I-only-have-hypotheses part."
Garret opened his mouth but promptly closed it. He was about to warn Khan about the unreliability of the data from a single test again, but he clearly didn't want to hear about that.
"It might be a side effect of the procedure," Garret explained. "The pool breaks your tissues but also invades them. You are probably still finalizing the session's changes."
"So, is it temporary?" Khan asked.
"It looks like that, My Prince," Abraham confird. "It's possible this is part of the intended tamorphosis. It's proven by the fact that you aren't running out of nutrients or mana to fuel the recovery."
Abraham ntioned a point Khan had missed. A body was an organic machine at its foundation. Healing required fuel, and such a quick recovery would inevitably demand far more energy than Khan currently wielded.
For all intents and purposes, Khan should be fainting on the spot, but his vitality only intensified. He felt better by the second, with no repercussions in sight. He was healing without paying the price for the process, leaving only one possible answer.
'I've already paid the price,' Khan concluded.
Khan's flesh had absorbed all the mana accumulated through the [Blood Vortex] but had probably only used part of it to fuel the transformation. Everything else had been stored for the following healing process as if predicting it would have been necessary.
'Now that I think about it,' Khan thought. 'The transformation was never supposed to be mindless. It follows a path, a path established by my body and mana.'
That conclusion went back to the toxic substance's nature. At its core, that liquid was an agent of change, not a destructive force. It lowered the requirents for the already-ongoing transformations without ruining their life cycle. Khan had simply pushed that feature to its
limits.
The recovery was part of the transformation, so it made sense that the toxic substance had accounted for that. Actually, Khan's body had probably predicted that when absorbing his
mana.
'Risks aside,' Khan considered, 'This thing works. Though I wonder when I'll see proper effects.'
"My Prince," Abraham called, distracting Khan from his thoughts. "I suggest you ditate to help finalize the process."
Khan nodded, jumping back on the bed and crossing his legs. He closed his eyes, diving into the familiar ditation. He forced his mana to flow and expand, irradiating his recovering
tissues.
The process helped with the recovery. Khan's healing pace was still increasing, and ditating intensified that trend. He lost track of ti, but when he opened his eyes, his body looked better than ever.
That outco wasn't limited to Khan's physical appearance. He felt full of energy, albeit starving. A strange sense of strength also pervaded him, filling him with confidence. His attunent level had dropped, but he had never been better.
Khan felt the urge to flex his arms, legs, and hands. He could tell sothing had changed, but his senses failed to spot those details. That was his body, albeit lighter than what he recalled.
Abraham and Garret were still in the dical bay. Of course, they had changed positions, with both sitting behind their respective consoles. They noticed Khan's awakening, but the machines did, too.
A buzzing noise resounded in the dical bay as a flicker ran through the equipnt. Nothing broke, and the instability only lasted a fraction of a second, but it happened and matched
Khan's awakening.
The scientists' surprise at the event claid Khan's attention, which had been focused on his body until now. He didn't do anything special, but the equipnt had reacted anyway. Noticing that reaction gave Khan an idea. He focused on his aura, unleashing its true nature. A gale blew through the dical bay as the air grew cold. Breathing beca difficult for the two scientists, and their hair stood up as their survival instincts kicked in. Sothing dangerous had filled the area, and their minds realized it.
Khan let his urges flow freely, letting them fill his aura. The symphony morphed, echoing his mind's violent nature. Cracks seed ready to appear in the invisible air, but the machines
gave up first.
More buzzing noises resounded, but the process didn't stop there. Sparks flared from the consoles' screens, releasing thin trails of grey smoke. Sothing had broken inside them, and the rest of the equipnt suffered from a similar fate.
An intrigued smirk broadened on Khan's face. His eyes seed to brighten as he focused on one specific console. His senses pierced its tal surface, finding its most brittle areas. His aura intensified on those spots, and more sparks flared.
The console's screen broke, releasing the smoke accumulated inside, but that wasn't enough for Khan. He closed his eyes, his senses updating him on all the existing flaws in his surroundings. He knew he could break everything with a single thought, and sothing
pushed him to do it.
Nevertheless, the dical bay's door suddenly opened, distracting Khan from his destructive desires. A familiar aura also invaded the symphony, replacing Khan's urges with new ones. His smile gained a different aning as he stared at the entrance, but his neck promptly bent sideways to dodge the incoming mass of mana.
A scarlet, fuming, uneven mass flew toward Khan and missed him by an inch, slamming into the wall behind. The attack burned so of Khan's hair, but he ignored it to look at the crash site. A lump of scorching lava had hit the tal surface, lting it as it flowed down. "Are you sure we can raise children with that temper of yours?" Khan wondered, glancing at
the attack's culprit.
"I swear!" Monica shouted, shooting toward the bed. "I will kill you one of these days!"
The threat sounded convincing enough to worry the two scientists. They were about to intervene when Monica jumped on the bed, but the kiss the couple exchanged stopped their attempts, and what followed forced them out of the dical bay.
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